Review: Ghostforce “Mastaar; Arakgum; ZipZap; Artiflame”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Ghostforce continue forcing at ghosts, including a ghost that controls people through music, a spider ghost that webs up yellow stuff with chewing gum webs, an electric ghost that controls people through screens, and a coal ghost that grows stronger and stronger.

OUR TAKE

This wraps up the first week of episodes on Disney XD and they pretty much continue the formulaic structure of the show that has been shown in the previous six episodes. Introduce surface level moral lesson, fight ghost whose is the name of the episode, rinse and repeat. Although now that we’ve gotten past the basic premise, I’m gonna have to start talking about the individual episodes and what are in them, I guess. Ah well, maybe all these details will eventually add up to some major continuity that the show makes use of to expand the story and themes and such. Though that’s gonna take awhile if the first season of Ladybug is any indication. Anyway, the first two of this batch, Mastaar and Arakgum, actually turn out to have quite a bit in common, very likely on accident. Both involve benching Andy for either all or most of the story, putting one of the two other Ghostforce-ers in the spotlight, and have them facing some sort of fear they have to overcome. In Liv’s case, she’s afraid of stage fright and has to push past it to save Andy from the ghost controlling people with music, and with Mike, he’s afraid of spiders. Also interesting is that you’d think that stories about fear would be more common in a show about ghosts.

The other two episodes, ZipZap and Artiflame, aren’t tied together by any clear theme, but they do at least a little character development for Mike, who has been shown to have a really famous basketball player dad who he doesn’t get to spend a lot of time with, but they still care about each other and end up connecting in unexpected ways. That’s pretty wholesome, even if it doesn’t do a whole lot to generate compelling conflict. In this case, it turns out they both play a mobile game and were unintentionally competing against each other. Though that’s burying the lead here, as the main point of the episode is about the dangers of being distracted on your phone when important stuff is happening! I assume it’s just about being distracted in general and not just on electronics. And then the last episode takes place very blatantly on Independence Day, which you can tell is in a show made by someone not from America because I have never heard any group of people call it Independence Day so much instead of “July 4th”. This one’s a team episode so it’s not really about much more than teamwork. Anywho, see you next week for the beginning of the next group!